


Tastes Like Summer

by Santhe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Land of Mounds and Xenon, Land of Pyramids and Neon, M/M, Minor Jake English/Dirk Strider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 13:24:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Santhe/pseuds/Santhe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s one of those moments, those crushing little seconds you never experienced when you were on your own. Up in that concrete box, accompanied only by robots and bright flashing text on glasses and screens, nothing was this real. You were too distant, too far away to care for anything but the grids, the calculations, the final goal and the neat, complex steps in the plan mapped across your brain.</p><p>Aka Dirk thinks too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tastes Like Summer

Oranges taste like summer.  
  
You’ve never had one before, not really. Jane was aghast when you told her that. How could you, Dirk Strider, love orange juice so much and never have eaten an orange?!  
  
It’s one of those moments, those crushing little seconds you never experienced when you were on your own. Up in that concrete box, accompanied only by robots and bright flashing text on glasses and screens, nothing was this real. You were too distant, too far away to care for anything but the grids, the calculations, the final goal and the neat, complex steps in the plan mapped across your brain.  
  
You know the apartment up and down. You know the exact location of every smuppet, every sword, every piece of furniture, every speck of dust. You know when you’re going to leave. You know how much you can eat each day to make it there with the rations you have. You know which Crocker products are essential, which can be scrapped and used for something else. Anything else.  
  
You know what skills you need, which ones are just for your entertainment. You know how to fight, you know your physical limits, you strive towards them, and you excel. You know how to build, sewing smuppets with ease, melding together bits of metal and wire into any robot you need. You know how to rap, how to twist words into that talking music and how to form the beat into life underneath the rhymes. You know how to plan, to predict what’s coming, think it all out to be ready, factor in every variable on the way.  
  
You didn’t think you needed anything else. Encountering people was not what you expected.  
  
Of course you’d seen people before. In the apartment, they were available through the internet. And in your sleeping world, there was Roxy, drifting restlessly through the darkened sky above the sea of darker creatures.  
  
Really seeing them didn’t shake you, not at first. Not in the action, as you released the plans you’d been creating for your whole life and watched them, tweaked them, pulled them into perfection, factoring in the red miles and the Condense as they worked. This wasn’t scary. This was a challenge. A beautiful, intricate puzzle you’d waited for forever.  
  
Then the action stops. No imminent death. No dangerous mission. No swordfight, no duel, no puzzle, and no more coming your way.  
  
You don’t know what to do.  
  
You would just go off on your own again, stick with your planet, explore. It would be far more interesting than the confinement over the ocean.  
  
But you can’t. Because you don’t know how to factor in people.  
  
You don’t know what to do with them. Jane, sweet and thoughtful and bustling. Roxy, laughing and dancing and loving. Jake, smiling and challenging and adventuring.  
  
You never realized how sad your exclusion from reality was until you’re back in it.  
  
The moments pile up faster than you thought they could. Cooking with Jane, dancing with Roxy, watching movies with Jake. All group activities, all things you never would have done had they not asked you to. Had you not seen the emotion they call disappointment drooping their faces when you start to shake your head no.  
  
And it starts to be more than that. You love being alone, but you’re drunk on this, this contact, this fellowship. Laughing and talking. A nudge on the arm, a smile, a glance in your direction.  
  
You don’t know why they mean so much, these little things. The way they move, the way they talk, the way they laugh.  
  
And it’s all so, so different. You expected to maybe, maybe get caught up on those things for Jake, who you’ve loved for years, but it’s not that kind of love that brings these things to your attention.  
  
You love how Jane thinks for a minute, brow furrowed and teeth worrying at her lip, before opening her mouth to speak, steadily and intelligently.  
  
You love Roxy’s freedom, how she doesn’t hold back her thoughts but spills them out, heartfelt and teasing, how she pulls all of you to do things you’re scared of, getting Jane to believe and Jake to think and even, on occasion, forcing you out of the rationality, grabbing your hand when you refuse to dance with the others but want to.  
  
You love how Jake laughs. Pure, unrestrained joy, head thrown back, eyes squinted, gasping for breath, echoing his happiness to the world.  
  
You don’t understand why they put up with you.  
  
Your speech is too quiet, too unreliable, held back from disuse and overthinking. Your smile, your laugh, you aren’t even sure if they exist, and if they do, you hide them just as well as your eyes. Your restraint is overbearing, your thoughts too complicated and long and fearful, spilling over into their happiness and lining it with worry.  
  
All together one day on Jake’s planet, you say it. Quietly, as always. You didn’t mean to, didn’t mean to open up, but at night, lying in a circle on rumpled blankets under the blinking starts, it slips out anyway. They’re talking freely, sharing and giggling and having a great time. Fun and free and happy and open. The opposite of you.  
  
It was only meant to be a thought, but your lips form the words, your tongue spits out it. Habit from living where no one would ever hear. Questioning why, oh why, did they want someone like you around?  
  
The whisper is met with silence, which is unusual. It’s broken by Roxy, which is ordinary.  
  
What little you’ve learned of people tells you to expect objections. Quick, unconsidered, because they don’t know how to hurt people, how to execute rejection.  
  
You were wrong.  
  
They do object, but not the way you thought they would. They are more intelligent than you give them credit for. Each and every one of them answers. First Roxy, with a long winded, slurred exclamation. Then Jake, with a quick agreement and addition. And finally, after a pause, Jane, understanding and careful.  
  
They are your best and only friends. And you have hidden so much from them, enough that they can’t possibly know everything about you, but the surface of it is clear to them. They know how much you care about them. They know the work you put into friendships with each of them, and what you have done to protect each and every one.  
  
Perhaps they don’t know the details, because you are more manipulative than they understand, but Jake knows that Brobot taught him to fight and Jane knows that Lil Seb protected her and Roxy knows, more than either of the others, the time, effort, and care you’ve poured into saving them all. Into bringing them here, together.  
  
You still don’t really understand why they care for you so, but that understanding is growing.  
  
Knowing their love- again, not in a romantic way, but as part of a friendship you didn’t know existed- gives you a warm feeling in your chest.  
  
It is a different love when you finally explain to Jake how you feel, when he agrees to try what you suggest, a question you were so uncertain about and so happy to finally get your answer.  
  
But love is a wonderful thing in any form.  
  
You are still learning how to trust them. You weren’t sure you could love without trust, but trust is growing, and love came first.  
  
You know it’s love when, on December 3, you have your first ever birthday party. It’s a surprise, of course. You never would have agreed to the efforts they put in otherwise, although you did suspect they were up to something.  
  
It’s on LOPAN, in Roxy’s house. She has it all decorated, and Jane has baked all sorts of cakes. Jake and Fefetasprite are there too (Erisolsprite, thankfully, is absent). They give you presents, sing the ‘happy birthday’ song you never expected to hear your own name in.  
  
The final gift is an orange.  
  
When Jake hands it to you, they are all grinning. You stare at it for a second, studying the rough surface of the peel as is rolls into the palm of your glove, confused. When you figure out what it is, remember the conversation you had with Jane about never trying one, your jaw drops, just for a second, before you snap it shut and look up at them. Ask them how they ever got one.  
  
Roxy just laughs. Jake is beaming. Jane says, through a giggle, that it was a team effort and that you should just eat it.  
  
You do. Although peeling it takes some effort.  
  
It tastes like summer.


End file.
